The internet makes incomprehensibly large amounts of information available for retrieval and review. This information is typically made available as the content of various web pages. Search engines such as Google™ now search well in excess of one billion web pages in response to queries input by users. While these search engines are generally satisfactory for their intended purpose, they do require the user to formulate and input a search query every time the user has to locate and retrieve information. This need is obviated in some instances by certain automatic processes for retrieving data, variously called “agents” or “spiders” or “bots.” These processes, however, at least in their current implementations have drawbacks. For example, the information on web pages available on the internet vary widely in terms of native format. These automated processes may encounter difficulties in reliably retrieving data from these resources.
The number of devices which can be used to access and display this information is also increasing dramatically. PCs, enterprise servers, PDAs, web-enabled phones, cable TV set top boxes, and home gateway systems are just some of the devices which now can be used to access information on the internet. Again, these devices may vary widely in terms of the format in which data must be in order to be displayed properly. Also, some of these devices are quite limited in terms of computational power and memory and they may use a variety of operating systems.
There is thus a need for a system which can reliably retrieve data originally in any one of a number of formats, and which can subsequently display that data in any one of a number of possible formats. At the same time, it is desirable that the system be compact and capable of operating under any one of a number of possible operating systems and environments.